LINACRE, William

Linacre was admitted to the guild merchant of Reading on 31 Jan. 1449, on paying the lord of the town, the abbot of Reading, no more than 4s., as he was the son of a burgess.3 Reading Recs. i. 31. Edward Linacre (twice mayor of Reading, in 1443-4 and 1451-2),4 Ibid. 18-20, 37-39. who appeared as his pledge, may well have been his father. William set up in business as a dyer and became engaged in the cloth trade. Although few details of his commercial activities have been traced, in 1454 he sued a Berkshire weaver in the court of common pleas for debts amounting to £14 18s.5 CP40/775, rot. 195d. An informant coming before the barons of the Exchequer in 1469 alleged that one Thomas Love of Newbury, acting as a deputy to the alnager in Berkshire, had confiscated from Linacre and his partner John Upston† of Reading 140 lengths of kersey at Maidenhead in August 1466, but had then, after they paid him an undisclosed sum of money, returned the goods to them, depriving the King of his dues. The charge against Love was eventually dropped after he produced a pardon granted during the Readeption, and the reason for the confiscation was not stated. Alnage accounts of the early 1470s show Linacre continuing to sell cloth in Reading.6 E159/246, recorda Trin. rot. 14; E101/343/26.

Linacre became closely involved in the affairs of his home town. In the course of his career he provided pledges for the admission to the merchant guild of ten other men, including, besides his future partner Upston, Henry Kelsale†and Cristin Nicholas†, who may also have become business associates of his.7 Reading Recs. i. 50, 52, 53, 59, 71, 75, 76, 86. In October 1450 he was named as a collector in London Street for the expenses of the parliamentary burgesses, and during his term in office as a cofferer, in June 1452, he was one of 25 townsmen nominated with the mayor (his kinsman Edward Linacre) to serve on the committee set up ‘ad determinandum et respondendum’ on behalf of the community. He was among the six named burgesses present with the mayor at a ‘morow speche’ on 3 Nov. 1458,8 Ibid. 35, 39, 48; cofferers’ accts. no. 40. and a year later he was elected to Parliament for the first time, this being the assembly summoned to meet at Coventry following the Yorkist defeat at Ludford Bridge. Clearly ambitious and determined to become the leading figure in the town, he secured nomination as one of the three candidates for the mayoralty on as many as 15 occasions between 1458 and 1480. Yet on ten of these occasions he failed to gain the necessary approval of the abbot, although whether because of personal antagonism between them is not clear.9 Reading Recs. i. 47, 52, 59, 60, 64, 66, 69, 71, 73. Together with four other burgesses in December 1462 Linacre was delegated with the then mayor to treat with the abbot regarding certain controversial matters between the townsmen and their lord, so it may be that the abbot did not take kindly to him.10 Ibid. 53.

Even so, Linacre was clearly popular with many of his fellow burgesses, who elected him to Parliament again early in the following year, initially for the session summoned to meet at York on 5 Feb. 1463, and then, after its cancellation, to the Parliament assembled at Westminster on 29 Apr.11 Ibid. 63. While the Parliament was in progress Linacre fell out with William Hert†, a smith whom he had earlier sponsored for admission to the guild, and brought an action against him in the court of common pleas alleging negligence in the care of a sick horse. Then, later on in the first session, he sued four other men, including Richard Tawke, a goldsmith whom he had similarly sponsored, for debts amounting to £16.12 CP40/808, rot. 188d; 809, rot. 274. Linacre was successfully elected mayor for the first time while Parliament was in recess (the second and final session did not start until January 1465). In August 1472 he was one of eight burgesses who gave their assent to the grant by the mayor and commonalty to William Baron* (a native of Reading who had furthered himself as a teller in the Exchequer) of a plot in Castle Street, to hold in perpetuity. Linacre was mayor for the third time when elected to Parliament again two months later, and as such he attested the electoral indenture of 2 Oct. 1472 recording his own return, and also attested the indenture for the knights of the shire.13 Reading deeds R/AT 1/158; C219/17/2. It was presumably during the recess between December 1472 and February 1473 that he sent a petition to the chancellor, the bishop of Bath and Wells. He had agreed with one John Stabeler of Oxford to purchase some land from him for £30, on the understanding that it was held in fee simple, and on discovering that it was in fact subject to an entail, had successfully demanded back the deposit of £10 he had paid in advance. Nevertheless, when he visited Oxford Stabeler took out plaints of debt and trespass against him, the one in the mayor’s court and the other before the bailiffs, and as a consequence he had been arrested and was still in prison. He requested a writ of corpus cum causa to be sent to the authorities at Oxford to bring him before the King in Chancery, and a subpoena to Stabeler to appear to answer. At Hilary 1473 the chancellor found the facts in the petition to be true and proven, so Linacre was released quit of the charges.14 C1/44/180.

As mayor again, Linacre attested Reading’s parliamentary election indenture of 7 Jan. 1478.15 C219/17/3. Symbolic of the attitude of the townsmen towards the abbot and their increasing sense of a corporate identity, were the changes they made under Linacre’s leadership with regard to ‘chepyngavell’, the sum of 5d. p.a. which for more than 200 years had been due to the abbot from every burgess in the guild as payment for his licence to trade in the borough. On 3 Nov. 1480, during Linacre’s fifth mayoralty, he ordained that in future this tax, instead of being paid by each burgess individually, should be paid out of the common chest of the guild, as funded by the generous donation of William Baron. At the end of this term in office Linacre received from his successor and the commonalty the lease of a building known as ‘Le Wharffhowse’ and the wharf next to it for a term of seven years, paying 10s. p.a. rent. Yet even though the mayor and burgesses were to sustain all repairs, towards the end of 1484 it was found that he owed the guild 63s. 3d., the bulk of which was a sum handed over to him by a former cofferer.16 Reading Recs. i. 78, 80, 82. Thereafter, Linacre became less active in the town, no doubt because of increasing age and infirmity, although he was one of the assessors of parliamentary subsidies in London ward in 1488, and undertook a journey to the capital on the community’s behalf in 1490-1.17 Ibid. 85; HMC 11th Rep. VII, 176.

Of Linacre’s private affairs little is recorded. In 1470, as a parishioner of the church of St. Giles, and along with the vicar, he relinquished his shared title to a tenement in London Street, which they had sold in fulfilment of a will; and six years later, in association with (Sir) William Norris*, he took on the feoffeeship of property in New Street once belonging to the draper Thomas Clerk II*.18 Reading deeds R/AT 1/153; CAD, iv. A9037. His marriage to a woman called Alice brought him possession of a messuage in the town, which, however, they conveyed to William Stothyn in 1489.19 CP25(1)/13/88/6. Linacre was a feoffee of property in Reading and elsewhere in Berkshire in 1493, on behalf of William Aspull, a local gentleman. He is last recorded, as a pledge for admission to the guild, in February 1498.20 Reading deeds R/AT 1/175; Reading Recs. i. 96.